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Erin
Brockovich
It's no secret that good female roles in Hollywood are as rare as a two-dollar bill. All you have to do is compare the Oscar nominations for actors and actresses, and you'll see the discrepancy. On one side are stand-out performances like Russell Crowe in The Insider, Denzel Washington in The Hurricane, and Kevin Spacey in American Beauty. On the other hand, the women have Annette Bening in American Beauty (a part considerably less interesting than her fictional husband's), Janet McTeer in Tumbleweeds and Meryl Streep (again!) in Music of the Heart. If the two acting categories were combined, none of the women would stand a chance. That's not to say those performances aren't worthwhile. In each case, the fault lies with the parts, not with the actresses. Which is why it's so exciting to see Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich. Here's a meaty role with a lot to do, and Roberts nails every scene. Watching this movie, it's hard to believe that just a few years ago her love life completely overshadowed her career. For Roberts takes a difficult part (both comic and serious) and makes it her own. Erin Brockovich is based on a true story of a small law firm that sued a utility company for contaminating the water in a local community. The story is tailor-made for Hollywood: a sassy young woman with no legal experience convinces a small-time lawyer to take on a corporate giant. With his legal savvy and her personal magnetism, they pursue the cause of justice and rescue the lives of hundreds of people. With a set-up like that, making an entertaining film wouldn't have been difficult. But director Steven Soderbergh (Out of Sight) pushes the movie to the brink of greatness. The film opens with Erin (Roberts) in a job interview. Roberts perfectly captures the awkward discomfort of applying for a position she has no hope of getting. Later, after a personal injury lawsuit goes bad, she walks into her lawyer's office and demands a job. The brazenness is combined with a deep vulnerability that is convincing. The lawyer, Ed Masry, is bullied into giving her a menial filing position. Going through some real estate files, Erin notices that certain things don't add up. She asks Ed if she can investigate and he agrees, just happy to have her out of his hair. It's during this investigation that Erin realizes that the utility company Pacific Gas & Electric has systematically deceived the residents of Hinkley, California. Going door-to-door in the small community, she persuades the residents to join the lawsuit. The movie thankfully spends little time in the courtroom. Instead, it focuses on the difficult process of getting the suit to court. This choice puts the focus squarely where it belongs--on Erin's life and her prickly relationship with her boss, played by Albert Finney. It's difficult to describe what a great job of casting Soderbergh has done. While picking Roberts as the sharp-witted, charismatic paralegal wasn't too much of a stretch, choosing Albert Finney as the lawyer who'd rather slouch towards retirement than take on a multi-million dollar suit is a stroke of genius. He's just wonderful as he tries to manage a woman who has no interest in being managed (their conversations about proper attire are fabulous), and his bemusement at her quick wit makes a nice counter-point to his common frustrations. And the chemistry Roberts and Finney have is a joy to watch. Early in the film, when she asks for an advance on her check, the humiliation on her face is matched perfectly by the discomfort on his. As the movie goes on, their relationship slowly grows into a friendship in a way that never feels false or forced. The real star of the show, though, is Julia Roberts. Combining her comic talents (watch her timing as she skewers various adversaries) with a solid dramatic focus, Roberts takes an interesting character and gives it a depth few female roles achieve. A romantic sub-plot between Erin and her biker boyfriend George (Aaron Eckhart, In the Company of Men) doesn't distract from the story but rather focuses our attention on the other gender conflicts running through the film. The script by Susannah Grant (Party of Five) understands the difficulty of a strong woman in the office, particularly if she dresses like a prostitute, as well as the travails of a single mother who's finally achieved something outside of the house. At the end of the movie, Erin says to George (who's been helping watch her kids), "See what you helped do." That inversion of the traditional husband-wife role is sharp and thought-provoking. Soderbergh, perhaps realizing that he had a blockbuster on his hands, directs Erin Brockovich with a more mainstream approach. He discards most of his usual camera and editing tricks and instead moves the film along with sleek verve. And thumbs up to costume designer Jeffrey Kurland (Bullets over Broadway) whose outfits for Erin add greatly to our understanding of her. Erin Brockovich isn't a great film in the sense of being artistically ground-breaking or philosophically challenging. But, like last year's Sixth Sense, it's a great story with tremendous acting and solid direction; and above all, it's thoroughly entertaining. With nice turns in last year's Notting Hill and Runaway Bride and now Erin Brockovich, Roberts has not only achieved popular acclaim but critical as well. Unless this year's female roles are considerably better than last year's, I think Julia can start making plans for the 2001 Oscars. J. Robert Parks 3/14/2000
Faithful to the three children her ex-husbands have left with her, desperate for a job, single mom Erin Brockovich is introduced to us a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But determination can work wonders. Erin cleverly maneuvers her way into a job with a small independent law-firm, determined to win herself some integrity and to put some bread on the table for her kids. On the other hand, determination is also a dangerous thing. When Erin gets to work on an old forgotten case involving a family struggling with sickness, she detects that something isn't right. She sniffs out a rat... a very big rat. A major corporation called PG & E is knowingly going ahead with its routine while it poisons the drinking water of a whole community. Erin's determination kicks in again. And it threatens to destroy her family. Her sense of responsibility and her conscience will test her commitment to her children, her relationship with a man who loves her, and her relationship with the very law firm that has involved her in this case in the first place. It's a true story. But it's one we've heard before. In movies from Silkwood to The Insider to A Civil Action, we've learned to recognize the basic outline, the key plot developments, the scares, and the triumphs. We know a big corporation is covering up its own naughtiness. We know that somebody somewhere is going to squeal on them. We know that the pioneer of justice will get a phone call threatening his or her family. We know that, against all odds, truth and justice will find a way to prevail. After all, this is Hollywood. And this is a formula that makes money and sends the audience away with smiles on their faces. Not only that, but here's another movie where the audience comes in without any doubt that the good guys will win. So why is this film so nerve-wrackingly entertaining? How is it that Erin Brockovich is still such an original and excellent film? There are several reasons. First and foremost, contrary to what you've heard, the real star of this movie is Steven Soderbergh, the director. It would have seemed impossible to me that a writer could take such a worn-out premise and make it enthralling, but this guy has done it. Soderbergh is proving to be Movieland's most astonishing gymnast. He has as varied and multifaceted a record as any director in the biz--- "sex, lies and videotape," an intimate and fascinating study of deteriorating urban marriages and relationships; a stylish thriller called Kafka; a heart-warming and memorable period piece about a boy surviving the Depression called King of the Hill; a colorful noir called The Underneath And there were others... documentaries, a daring cable TV series, a Spaulding Gray monologue. And then came Out of Sight, which many critics (including me) called the Best Film of 1998... and that was the same year as Saving Private Ryan and Shakespeare in Love. Last year, he was lauded for The Limey, a small tightly-wound crime story that gave Terrance Stamp the kind of juicy center-stage role most actors dream about. Now, he's given Julia Roberts the kind of role all actresses dream about. With a smart script, an avoidance of indulgent Hollywood glamour shots, brilliant camera work by his colleague Ed Lachman, and an eye for subtle and revealing details, he makes every minute of this movie watchable, entertaining, and intimate. That's the first reason. The second reason is, and I am still surprised to find myself saying this, Julia Roberts. I've never really disliked Julia, but I've grown weary of seeing her in mediocre-to-ridiculous movies, and I'm even more weary of seeing her love life on the cover of tabloids. She hasn't given us performances that reveal more than a stereotypically glamorous appearance and a devastating smile. And here, she dresses in more outrageously revealing outfits than she did in Pretty Woman, when she played a prostitute. But lo and behold, Erin Brockovich proves that Roberts is, after all, a formidable actress. Yes, she does wear next-to-nothing outfits. Yes, she gets to unleash that irresistible smile over and over again. But she has made Erin a completely believable character. She give her intelligence, courage, deep wounds, and a wicked sense of humor. She teaches us just how easily we all judge people by their appearances. There's heart and virtue mixed in with the initially suspicious packaging. While it's clear to me that the world has gone wrong when an actress can expect to be paid $20 million dollars for a movie, Roberts is certainly becoming an actress worth watching. A good deal of the credit for this film should also go to writer Susannah Grant. Grant turned a formula fairy tale into a wonderful revisionist Cinderella a few years ago with Drew Barrymore in Ever After. Erin Brockovich should catapult her to the front of the scriptwriter's line. Her dialogue is never sentimental. It's smart, it says only what is necessary, and it says it with wit, irony, and the whip-smart precision of David Mamet. There are other things worth praising here. Albert Finney and Aaron Eckhardt provide powerful support for Roberts. Soderbergh develops their personalities without ever removing Roberts from the limelight. Finney might have just played straight-man to Roberts, but even in the moments where Erin's profanity-laced rants fluster and befusticate him, he invests energy in giving us revealing details about his character Ed Masery, and we come to sympathize with his rock-and-a-hard-place dilemma. He's risking his whole company on Erin's determination to win, and we don't want to see him get hurt. That takes some great acting, and Finney has it. Eckhardt plays George, the muscular Harley Davidson hunk who falls for Erin and becomes a caretaker for her children. George loves her passionately, likes her kids, and opens up his great big heart. But when Erin's single-minded determination to save the community robs her of a healthy perspective on her role as Mom, he tries to reason with her, and fails. Soderbergh does not indulge us with scenes of loud debate or melodramatic personal anguish. Instead, we watch a line of Harleys roar down the highway, and we watch George's head turn to watch. In that moment of silent and tangible longing, Soderbergh is at his best. No dialogue. No swelling soundtrack prodding our tear ducts open. Nothing. It's all we need. It's perfect. I could recount a dozen instances where any other director would have explained the drama to the audience, but Soderbergh refrained. And the audience I was with didn't seem to miss a thing. That's what makes Soderbergh such an exemplary talent... he trusts the audience, more than any director I know, to have brains... to "get it". Soderbergh also refuses to sugar-coat the tough moral dilemma here. Should Erin save the community and leave her kids in the care of others, or should she first and foremost take care of her own family? We've watched Kevin Costner angst-ridden as his family suffered while he investigated the death of JFK. We saw Russell Crowe's furrowed brow as his family dissolved before his eyes in The Insider. These movies usually give a nod in the direction of the dilemma. But they rarely reveal what tangled and torturous consequences come from such crusades against Goliath. As we watch Erin driving back from a day of tough research, she hears her boyfriend tell her about his day with the kids, and her misery is palpable. Is she making the wrong choice, working overtime to expose the crimes of a major corporation? Perhaps. But we're also made painfully aware of how a neighborhood has been deceived into believing that their drinking water is safe, and now they're all dying, oblivious to the fact that they've been duped. Somebody has to pay. Somebody must ride to the rescue. And if this trash-talking, scantily-clad bombshell doesn't do it, it doesn't look like anybody will. What would you do in this situation? Take care of your kids and watch your neighbors and friends die at the hands of an indifferent and careless company? It's not important that the movie show the characters making the right decisions. It's important that the movie present the questions, present convincingly what these people would decide to do, and then leave it to us to think about. THAT's why this movie is hardly your typical formula picture. (And why Roger Ebert didn't see that, I have no idea. In his review, he can't quit griping about Roberts' revealing outfits. Go watch the film again, Roger.) If I have any complaints, I'd ask Soderbergh why the two professional lawyers that try to take the case from Masry and Brockovich had to be such one-dimensional rats. But that's one small criticism for an excellent work. It's only March, but we may already have a Best Picture contender on our hands for next year. If Oscar overlooks quality (and if it overlooks the first half of the year, like it usually does), then you'll hear me griping about it come January. Erin Brockovich is worth seeing. It proves that a cliche became a cliche for a reason, and sometimes it just takes a little ingenuity to re-invigorate an old story. This movie has a lot of rare and memorable ingenuity. And yes, a lot of cleavage too. But if that ruins the movie for you, you need to step back and watch what ELSE is happening on the screen. Jeffrey Overstreet 3/18/2000
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